FedEx is launching a new e-commerce platform as it competes with Amazon

FedEx announced today that it will launch a new “data-driven commerce platform” this fall called fdx that it says will give online merchants “end-to-end e-commerce solutions.” The company’s new platform is aimed at helping businesses manage their supply chain, sell to customers, and manage deliveries.

The company wrote in its announcement that fdx will combine existing FedEx commerce tools, like access to members of ShopRunner, an e-commerce marketplace FedEx acquired in 2020, with features debuting in the fall like the ability to create a “custom post-purchase experience” so brands can give customers more accurate shipment information or use insight from FedEx’s shipment network data for order management.

Christina Meek, FedEx’s global relations manager, told The Verge in an email that FedEx isn’t in the marketplace business, and that it’s offering businesses “digital capabilities and insights” while they control their customer experience.

The new platform comes as the company competes in logistics with Amazon, a company FedEx has seen as a threat to its business for years. In 2019, FedEx declined to renew a contract to fly Amazon cargo through FedEx Express. Later that year, Amazon forbade its sellers from using FedEx for Prime deliveries during the holidays, blaming declining performance — a ban it lifted the next year.

FedEx has been losing ground to Amazon, as has UPS, so much so that Amazon made more home package deliveries in the US in 2022 than either of them. That’s just a few years after the online retail giant built up a logistics operation that largely uses tightly controlled third-party contractors that Amazon insists aren’t its employees.

Update January 14th, 2024, 3:43PM ET: Updated to add clarity.

Update January 14th, 2024, 11:50PM ET: Updated with clarification on the tools FedEx is offering businesses and a statement from FedEx.